Why Egypt Isn’t Easy

I have sympathy for the argument that we should distance ourselves materially from the Egyptian regime, and very little regard for the argument that we should effectively “go to war” with the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s particularly bizarre to contemplate us simultaneously backing Egypt’s repression of the Brotherhood and backing a substantially-Islamist insurgency in Syria. If nothing else, the fact that we can’t decide whether or not to continue to support Egypt’s military as it engages in violent repression of the opposition should make it abundantly clear that we should not support the violent overthrow of the Syrian government.

And I’ve written in the past that our influence in Egypt is going to wane inevitably. When Mubarak was being eased out, I said that the best-case scenario involved Egypt becoming far less-tractable and less useful as an American ally. Our goal, I said, ought to be to try to make the transition from one regime to another as smooth as possible. And I said that a smooth transition might well not be possible. It has proved not to be.

But I don’t think that makes the call on Egypt now an easy one. America already has had the experience multiple times of cutting off clients who have crossed a red line of one sort or another. For example, we abandoned the Shah when he had plainly lost the support of his people. This did not win us any goodwill once the Iranian revolution brought to power a profoundly anti-American regime – because the Iranians had not forgotten America’s longstanding support of the Shah, and because the Ayatollahs had their own reasons for setting themselves up in opposition to America.

For another example, in response to Pakistan’s escalating program of nuclear weapons acquisition – and, not incidentally, in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union – beginning in 1990 the United States increasingly distanced itself from Pakistan. Over the course of the next decade, Pakistan still developed a nuclear arsenal, a generation of Pakistani officers grew up without relationships with the United States, and Pakistan became deeply involved in the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. We all know what happened next.

I can think of three good arguments, broadly speaking, for cutting off aid.

The first is the ethical one. American law requires cutting off aid because of the coup; to avoid that, we’ve delayed so far acknowledging the obvious. Moreover, the Egyptian military is engaged in brutal repression of the opposition. Cutting off aid would make it clear that we do not condone and will not support that kind of repression. It will, to some extent, keep our hands clean.

But what is the practical value of those clean hands? We will not win any good will from the Muslim Brotherhood, who already know that we were silently pleased with their removal from power, and who are ideologically disposed to be our opponents in any event. Nor will we earn any good will from governments in the region who will see this as more evidence of our fecklessness (many of them are already appalled at our willingness – correct, in my view – to abandon Mubarak).

And then there’s the question of whether the coup will succeed in the medium term. If it does, what are the odds that we will keep it at arms-length? And if we re-embrace a military regime after a decent interval, what, from an ethical perspective, will we have achieved by making a show of distance?

A second argument is narrowly tactical. From this perspective, our goal should be maximizing our influence over whatever regime consolidates power in Cairo. By refusing forthrightly to censure the plotters of the coup, we have proven ourselves feckless in support of democracy and encouraged the military to believe that we need them more than they need us. We need to redress that imbalance. A cutoff of aid could quickly produce an agreement to hold new elections. Then aid could be restored and we can hope that the opposition will be chastened – or will boycott the election – resulting in a regime that we can more comfortably support. Even if that regime winds up fighting an increasingly radical opposition, it will have more legitimacy and America will have more influence than would be the case if we simply sat back and let happen whatever will happen.

There are two problems with this view. First, if America didn’t cut off aid when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, and doesn’t cut off aid after they were deposed in a coup, then plausibly we’re sending a message that we don’t much care about the character of the Egyptian regime. We care about the treaty with Israel, our rights in the canal – in general, how Egypt comports itself internationally. By contrast, if we cut off aid, and then restore it after some kind of fig-leaf elections are held, we are more clearly enmeshing ourselves in Egypt’s internal affairs than if we held ourselves aloof.

Second, what if it doesn’t work? What if the Egyptian regime, rather than complying with American wishes, defies America and wraps itself in the flag? Wouldn’t that, actually, be the best strategy of all for a regime aiming to survive in Egypt’s current environment? The military, previously widely-reviled, is now viewed more favorably by that segment of the Egyptian population that opposed Mubarak but was appalled by the Morsi government. Wouldn’t a burst of nationalist fervor help it consolidate public support?

A third argument is broadly strategic, and, in contradiction to the tactical perspective, aims at fundamentally changing America’s relationship with Egypt, regardless of the end-game. The goal, in this view, should be cooler, more distant relations, on the grounds that our interests are not well-aligned and that our confidence in the stability of any Egyptian partner is poor.

This view makes a great deal of sense if either of two things are true: if America is interested generally in reducing our involvement in regional affairs, or if Egypt doesn’t much matter anymore for America’s regional position.

I find the second contention hard to defend. If the situation in Egypt deteriorates into something resembling Syria, that would have significant implications for American interests. America is already concerned about Egypt losing effective control over some of its territory, and the rise of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in the vacuum. How much more concerned would we be if we started to fear for the security of the Suez Canal? On a relative basis, Egypt is much less-influential than it was fifty years ago. On an absolute basis, though, it’s a much, much bigger country. If we decide that Egypt doesn’t much matter to us, I think we can safely say that we’ve decided that the Middle East doesn’t much matter to us.

Which it well might not. But I am not shocked that the American government is reluctant to decide on the fly and under the pressure of rapidly-changing circumstances in one country to significantly reorder its priorities in this part of the world.

Again, to be clear, I think there’s a good case to be made for taking the opportunity to reduce our exposure to Egypt. But we shouldn’t overestimate the likely benefits of such an approach, and there’s a tactical case to be made for a much less-decisive course of action aimed at muddling through.

Meanwhile, if we want to change our strategy in the Middle East, the place to begin is our confrontational policy vis-a-vis Iran – and we should do it deliberately and calmly. Our approach to Egypt is inevitably going to be tactical, with a goal of preserving what influence we can and promoting stability as best we are able. And from a tactical perspective, all our options look pretty poor.

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12 Responses to Why Egypt Isn’t Easy

Our entanglement with Egypt is all about Israel. The US gave no aid to Egypt, despite the existence and importance of the Suez Canal, prior to the peace treaty in 1979. Indeed, Eisenhower refused to support the joint Anglo-French-Israeli Suez War whose principal aim was to secure the canal from a potential Soviet client. The only reason that we hesitate now to cut off Egypt is Israel and its powerful agents in our domestic politics.

How about the much simpler argument by cutting off aid to Egypt and Syria while removing troops from Afghanistan limits our interests in the Muddle East. Why do we have such interests in this area? We can buy oil on the market.

we abandoned the Shah when he had plainly lost the support of his people. This did not win us any goodwill . . .

I can think of three good arguments, broadly speaking, for cutting off aid.

The first is the ethical one. . . .

But what is the practical value of those clean hands? We will not win any good will from the Muslim Brotherhood . . .

There’s a buried (well, not very deeply buried) assumption here that an appeal to ethics can be dismissed by pointing out that there are no practical benefits to behaving ethically. But the essence of an appeal to morality and ethics is that it takes as a given that there may be practical downsides to doing the right thing.

There are counterarguments to that strictly ethical (or moral) approach to politics and foreign policy, especially when ethical behavior in the short-term might reap predictable and awful consequences in the medium-term. But I don’t think an appeal to ethics can be raised and then summarily dismissed on the grounds that there are no practical benefits to behaving ethically–especially since the “consequences” raised in this post seem to be, “Despite behaving ethically, we will continue to suffer the mistrust and anger of people who currently mistrust us and are angry with us.” Certainly cheering on bloody repression by our clients is no clear path to the love and trust of Arabs, Islamists or anyone else, so why not simplify the problem and just do the right thing?

Certainly cheering on bloody repression by our clients is no clear path to the love and trust of Arabs, Islamists or anyone else, so why not simplify the problem and just do the right thing?

I shouldn’t have said we’re “cheering on” this violence. That would be bad enough, but what we’re actually doing is funding and condoning the violence, while making a show of clutching our pearls. Maybe we’d be better off, morally, if our support for despotism was pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Charlie: that’s entirely fair, but it is exceedingly unlikely that we, or any other state, will begin doing “the right thing” in a deontological sense with anything remotely resembling consistency. Moreover, there is a considerable difference between saying, “we can’t kill those people; it would be wrong” and “that regime is killing their people, which is wrong – so we must distance ourselves from them.” If a deontological ethics is going to be persuasive at all, it will be far more so in the former case.

Noah172: Eisenhower opposed the Suez war precisely because he didn’t want to lose influence across the non-aligned world. A year before the war, America was still trying to outbid the Soviet Union to become Egypt’s patron. It doesn’t make sense to cite Eisenhower’s decision as evidence of Egypt’s unimportance – quite the contrary.

Richard Parker: that’s the funny thing about legislation that aim to set foreign policy: the Executive has a deuced habit of ignoring it when it is inconvenient, with the Legislature’s full though tacit cooperation. It’s almost as if we do pass laws substantially to make ourselves feel good rather than to accomplish anything.

Noah, I don’t disagree, and I don’t look for total moral consistency in our foreign policy or any country’s foreign policy. On the other hand, I still do think we should start with the proposition that we should act morally and ethically, and look for very good reasons to depart from moral and ethical behavior (the same is basically true in personal life, but fortunately we live in a society where very few people have to, say, steal or commit murder to keep their families safe and fed).

In the case of Egypt, I do recognize that there are some interests served by colluding with the government that’s engaging in this violence (there was a New York Times article laying out some of the details a few days ago). But the consequences you lay out–that we’ll continue to be viewed as enemies by Islamists, that other governments in the region will see us as feckless, that we might reverse course later (and, presumably, be seen as incompetent as well as brutal)–all seem to be just the cost of doing business as a country that feels its interests are served by being deeply involved in a brutal and unstable part of the world. We’ll also incur the wrath of Islamists and be seen as feckless if we appear to be allowing a client to lead us by the nose as it uses our money and weapons to engage in repression we profess to oppose.

In the absence of a very compelling practical reason to continue supporting this regime, I think the moral and ethical thing to do is to cut ties. That said, I also happen to think we’d reap practical and moral benefits from defining our “interests” less broadly, and by refusing to define setbacks (like cutting loose a brutal client that serves some of our interests) in catastrophic terms.

By the way, I don’t quite agree that this captures our relationship with Egypt:

Moreover, there is a considerable difference between saying, “we can’t kill those people; it would be wrong” and “that regime is killing their people, which is wrong – so we must distance ourselves from them.”

Saying we might “distance ourselves” from Egypt carries, to me, the implication that we’re not involved in the wrongdoing, and would just be making a show of expressing our disapproval. I think we actually do that quite a bit with Russia and China, to no apparent purpose beyond moral preening. But Egypt is much closer to a case where we should be saying, “we can’t kill those people, it would be wrong.” Our current policy is to give the people ordering the killing money and weapons, in order to make sure they remain in power and do our bidding. Giving despots the means to stay in power and massacre their citizens is “killing people,” and is wrong, as I understand those terms.

Egypt’s neighbors wanted a coup because they didn’t like the Muslim Brotherhood. I read Saudi Arabia was helping groups that were undermining the Muslim Brotherhood. If the US cuts aid then Saudi Arabia will provide it as they have said.

The United States should obey the law regarding military coups or it should remove the law. It shouldn’t intervene and join in the killing. Egypt’s neighbors wanted this and the blood is on their hands. The US could work with Egypt’s neighbors to provide sanctuary for refugees if such a place existed and use diplomacy to end the killing. I think the whole region has a need to self destruct and have a long war. That was what 9/11 was about. The people and rulers in the region have a blood lust that demands quenching and the US is either picking favorites or is in the way. As Michael Scheuer said, that we need to step back and let the pieces fall as they may. The British Empire created this mess and it is time to let countries violently reorganize themselves. After they grow tired of killing each other maybe they will be like the Europeans and behave themselves.

It’s true that cutting off aid to Egypt’s military will likely not buy us anything with the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. But does that aid buy us anything with the military either? If not (and I don’t see that it does), the real question is why are we throwing good money after bad?

Re Johnny F. Ive: Your pastiche of rather poorly informed history and ill-informed ethnic conclusions really says nothing useful (as your evidently poor grasp of geography in writing: “The US could work with Egypt’s neighbors to provide sanctuary for refugees …” As Egypt’s neighbours are Libya, Israel, North Sudan (and if one counts across the sea, KSA), this sort of comment betrays gross and profound ignorance).

Lounsbury, from my understanding the European powers carved up the Middle East splitting peoples apart into different made up countries, and after two world wars the major powers in Europe haven’t gone at it again (they have chosen a different path). I’ve witnessed a decade of the Iraqi civil war so I’m pretty jaded now concerning the prospect of ethnic harmony in the Middle East. Also Saudi Arabia and other gulf states have intentionally undermined Libya, Syria, and Egypt with their resources. The mujahedin has provided the cannon fodder in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. Then there is Israel which supposedly doesn’t want any regional contenders. The rest is just regurgitation of what Michael Scheuer has talked about: America is propping up hated regimes (and receiving blow back from it) when it should just let the people in the Middle East sort it out. The Middle East is dysfunctional and America is subservient to some of the states in the Middle East that help cause the destabilization. I don’t see the United States using its big stick and laying down the law to all. As you pointed out in your ad hominem, appealing to Egypts neighbors is a joke, but what alternative is there besides begging Saudi Arabia for a little mercy on its victims (drop aid and Saudi Arabia will make up the difference)? Is the US going to put sanctions on Egypt and Saudi Arabia? The US is going to do nothing to the Gulf Counter Revolution club.